


Voicebox satirical

by chocolatemilk2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, Oneshot, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 21:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatemilk2/pseuds/chocolatemilk2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lil Cal is not quite human, and not quite puppet. Dave isn't perfect, and the apartment swelters with the heat of the moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voicebox satirical

The floor fan whirrs over the low thrum of the bass. Sweat drips down your fingers and splashes over the edges of your mixing gear. Air shimmers around the drawn shutters, and the world is hot and sticky and dark. You throw your head back and focus on regaining your concentration to let the beat drop.

You're losing your cool, literally. Timing is everything right now. Rambles flutter through your lips like the gay ass streamers Bro tied to the fan. They're fantastical gibberish, like you're at an evangelist church sermon and pretending to be communicating with an angel and only really achieving sounding nuts. The raps sounding nuts, not the streamers. Streamers are not capable of sentient life, let alone vocalisation.

The lead guitar screeches. It doesn't match the synth. You're overthinking it. You could use a stiff drink, or at least a long one.

Your fossils are rotting in the sun in the corner of your vision. It's too hot to fetch them. You loop the feed back and wander into the other room, enjoying the reverb of your mix beneath the faded black carpet. It runs up your legs and gives light tremors to your thighs, like the touch of a lover.

The apple juice is chilled and sweet on your lips. Flavour blossoms on your tongue and bleeds down your throat. You sigh in either relief or pleasure. Bro isn't here to keep your guard up for once.

The same bars over and over again are mindless and soothing. You're not one for trance, but investing too much intensive detail jangles the audio focus. The music needs to breathe, needs breaks. Your shoulder gradually ease apart. You could use a break, too. From pretending to be so all that. Sometimes the casual crassness feels like it cheapens your life, the way the takeout and gamebro magazines do.

Hair prickles on the back of your neck. You twist around.

Cal stands on the stairs, very definetly not slumped over them, but stiff and ramrod straight by some miracle of physics. Like a person. His glassy eyes look past you and at you at the same time. You're torn between the urge to look away and apprehension as to what might happen if you do.

The bass in the background suddenly seems as if it's racing. The fridge whirs in complaint because you left its door open. You lick up the last flecks of apple juice from the carton lid.

Cal is still gazing at you, the stairwell shadowing his feet. You have the urge to run and fetch your camera so you can finally prove to Bro just how creepy the thing is. It's unmistakeable here, the ghoulish, possesed look to his - its - eyes. Desperation. But for what? You swallow.

"Sup," you whisper, the plastic juice carton crackling beneath the clamp of your fingers. The beat swallows your words. You feel sweat slowly drip its way from your hairline to your lower back. Cal's mouth hangs wide open in a dislocated grin. Its inside is deep and black. The only light in the room is from the refrigerator door, casting your shadow towards Cal, but Cal's shadow is facing the wrong direction.

The light slams on. You suck in a deep breath in shock. You draw a sword from the fridge in the desperate moment where your eyes haven't adjusted.

"Dave?" Bro says more like an admonishment, reading your stance, the sord, and the fridge door left wide open. "The hell? You not still afraid of Cal, are you?"

"Nah," you lie, putting the sord back in the fridge and dusting off your shirt.

"That's utter bull," Bro proclaims, unscrewing a beer cap with his shirt and crouching on the couch. "Bet you were just sitting there the entire time screaming like a little bitch."

"Oh, you know I was," you sass sarcastically. "Like they say, if you can't beat them, join them. How else will I get money and fuck bitches if I don't learn their honing call? I bet I'd be like the destitue bitch of the bitch clan, scraping up banana peels, autotuning all my bitchsqueals. Then the other bitches will catch on and stop flocking to my hobo concerts."

"Can't have that," Bro declares, flicking his bottle. "Might have to bitchslap a dude."

You tense up, wondering if he's talking about you, or your fictional clientelle, if he was actually following. Topic change in order. "Good crowd?"

"Yeah, for a day club. Can't believe trolls can even be fucked to invent that shit."

"I feel you," you say. You need a segway out of this convo fast. "Just a sec, lemme turn the bass down."

"Grab me another beer, would you?"

You hesitate. Cal stands by the fridge, blue eyes glowing preternaturally by some trick of the light. But you already told Bro you're not scared of him, you can't back out now.

(You're not scared, you're terrified.)

Up close you can see the paint flecks in the wood grain, and you feel his eyes follow you as you turn around to grab the six pack. All your instincts are screaming at you that this is a bad idea.

"Let's be friends, Dave!" Cal says.

You whirl around, breathing rapidly. You stare into its eyes for any human recollection. "Did you hear that, Bro?" You demand, unable to tear your eyes from the thing, oh god oh god. Its mouth is shut.

"Whaaaat?" Bro shouts over the bass.

You back away, hands shaking, and stumble to your room where you barricade the door and cut the music.

You leave the house without any explanation.

 

You get home about 11pm, trashed, to find your take out gone cold in its cute red box. You're gone enough not to really give a fuck, and eat half the thing stumbling around blindly, humming and slurring Nicki Minaj to yourself. You giggle to yourself about John and what a lightweight he was. And how Rose is really, really into wizard porn more than you ever wanted to know, and somewhere earlier there was alarm bells she got drunk with you, but Roxy's right. Life's too short to worry about anyone else's crap when you don't have to. She and John will make a great couple, if Rose can get over the whole mom thing.

You love your friends. You suspect you told them this numerously, and also how they were the best ever, and crap like that. Rose just sighed. Why'd she do that? Well, fuck if you knew. Fuck, you can't find the lightswitch in the hall, what the fuck, you're a disoriented piece of shit. You trip over one of the turntable power cords in your room and fall to the ground laughing. The ceiling spins for half an hour while you struggle to sit back up.

You crawl from the floor into bed and cradle your pounding head against the pillow.

Silence.

In the dark, you hear a giggle.

You shoot up, fingers grasping for a nonexistent sword, but it was so brief you might've imagined it. Fuck, it might've even been your own giggle. A few seconds pass and nothing happens. You're so tired, you just want to sleep goddamnit. You lie back down cautiously, and slip your eyes shut.

"Hoo he hoo!" something giggles in your ear. What?

You squint your eyes open and Cal is inches from your shades, mouth wide and chattering with silent laughter.

You scream and fling him away from you, ripping the covers towards your chest.

You can't tell if he's lying unmoving in the dark. You hear nothing.

You wince internally, knowing you're going to cop a sackful of it from Bro im the morning for crying out. But you're too freaked out right now to be ashamed. What the fuck was that? Did Bro put a robot skeleton and voicebox in Cal while you were out, or something.

"Why don't you want to be friends, Dave?" a high, reedy voice asks from the darkness. "Don't you want to play a game?"

You flashstep into the hall and sprint down the stairway to Bro's room, where you smack the door open. He's lying in bed, and you run to his side.

"Bro, wake up!" You hiss. "Bro, come on." You tug at his arm frantically.

Bro doesn't move. He lies completely still, and you can see Cal reflected behind you in the lenses of his shades.

You're suddenly stone cold sober. Your fingertips begin to tremble. Bro is cold to the touch. You raise your hand to the night light and flick the switch.

He's impaled on his own katana. "HEEE hooo HEEE hoo!" laughs Cal.

Bro.

"HHEEE hee HOOOO heeeee HE hoooooooo!!!"

"Shut up!" you scream. "Fucking shut up!"

You see red flying from the katana as you rip it from his chest cavity and slash it at the puppet.

"Let's play now!" Cal chortles. "Come play with Lil Cal, Davey! Cal never gets to play with Lil Dave!"

Your swings are wild and off the mark. Your feet fumble in the dark and your head is blistering with pain and confusion.

You're going to kill it. You don't care what it takes.

"I-I'm going to kill you for ever touching Bro," you swear hotly, tears dripping down your cheeks. "Whatever you are. I'll make you suffer."

"He he hooo! Big Bro used to say, I'm too busy to play with Cal! Heeee ho! HOOO hee! And that's no fun! Big Bro made Cal lonely! hoo he heeee HHEHEEHOOO! NOW BIG BRO IS LONELY!!!"

You scream and run at Cal, smashing the sound system behind him and cracking the door. You flash after Cal, who zooms through the air as if controlled by something demonic, and you yell at the top of your lungs slashing with all your might.

"Hooo heee hoo! Naughty Davey, playing inside isn't cool!! Come play with Cal on the roof, Davey! Hoo hee! Come play there!"

Cal flies out the window and yoy curse, sword stabbing at mid air. You know a trap when he hear one, you've been ambushed there enough times before. It's all down to you. Bro's dead and you couldn't save him. Bro couldn't warn you. Had he known, and been unable to say anything? At least he died in his sleep. 

You have to call John and let him know you might die. You grope for your phone in the dark frantically, sobs choking from your throat although you aren't crying.

"Hooo hee hoo!"

You freeze. "Oh g-god, help," you stutter out, voice hitching with withheld tears, damp chill creeping from the window into the cooked house. "Please John." 

"Hello?" It's Bro. Oh no, shit, fuck you can't take this you can't.

Must be fucking Cal using your brother, manipulating you like his puppet, like a fucking /toy/-- "I'll dissect your corpse like one of my dead things," you say. "I'll do it."

"Who is this?"

"Hoo HEEE hoo!"

You alomst break down. You just want to hear Bro's voice one last time. "It's me, Bro. It's Dave."

"This is Hal speaking. It seems you've confused me with my full fleshed counterpart. What's the problem?"

"I'm dizzy-- shit, I didn't type John's number. You've got to tell him. The game was real, and Lil Cal is in on it. And tell him I'm sorry."

"Wait-- the game? Sburb?"

"We won," the words are hollow in your mouth. "Forgot."

The puppet is waiting. You wipe Bro's blood from his sword the way Bro used to wipe your tears from your cheekbones.

You think of all the music you've never played, and fight.


End file.
